


Please Remain Silent

by PaulineDorchester



Series: Victory Roll [4]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Anxiety, Episode: Invasion, F/M, Letters, Lies, Missing Scene, Other, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28366551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulineDorchester/pseuds/PaulineDorchester
Summary: April 1942: A missing scene from ‘Invasion’.
Relationships: Andrew Foyle & Christopher Foyle, Andrew Foyle/Sam Stewart, Christopher Foyle & Sam Stewart
Series: Victory Roll [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840678
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Please Remain Silent

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** These characters belong solely to Anthony Horowitz, as do the two lines of dialogue in this story. No profit is either sought or made hereby.
> 
> **Furthermore:** This is my very first piece of fan fiction. I wrote the earliest version in May 2015 and then began looking for a place to publish it. Having settled on FanFiction.net (mainly for the comparative ease, as I saw it then, of its uploading process), I was unnerved to discover there a very similar piece, written from a different P.O.V. but based on essentially the same premise. (Great minds think alike.) By the time I recovered from the bad case of the screaming fantods — no pun intended — that this caused, the story had disappeared from the site along with any trace of its author. It is still available here on AO3, however, so I am posting this with a deep curtsy to thecat_13145, author of _K.A.T.E._

The day appears to start well. The weather is better than it has been in a week. The paper carries no particularly bad news, or at any rate no entirely new bad news. The morning post consists solely of a letter from Andrew — the first since January, and the envelope noticeably thicker than in the past. Andrew’s letters from Debden have usually been a matter of just one sheet, sometimes just one side of that sheet; Foyle supposes that his son has been putting most of his effort into writing to Sam.

He goes into the sitting room, finds a letter opener on the desk, slits the envelope, and returns to the kitchen to read the letter while he finishes drinking his tea.

_Dear Dad,_

_To begin, please accept my apologies for not having written in so long. To make things worse, it’s most likely you will not hear from me again for some time after this. For the next couple of months, or perhaps a bit longer, I am going to be on call, if that’s the right way to put it, to fly ops for a mission that I’m not free to discuss. That’s actually why I never wrote to you after January — I was away from Debden being trained for this job, first in_...

The rest of the line and most of the next one have been blacked out.

... _I’ve taken this on because I’m easily the most experienced pilot here, particularly for night ops, low-altitude flying, etc., and most of the others are really just kids_...

_There is, of course, a very real possibility that I won’t return_...

_I know how hard it has been for you to be both mother and father to me since Mum died_... _I_

_can’t even begin to express_...

... and on for three full pages.

The room now feels terribly close. Foyle thinks of going out to the garden for some air, but Sam will come by to collect him at any moment. He won’t hear her knock at the door if he isn’t in the house.

_Andrew will have written to her about this as well_ , he thinks, _but she might not have read his letter yet_. He remembers Sam saying that the morning post is often late in her street, and that even when it isn’t she often saves what she calls ‘real letters’ — _those that aren’t entreaties from her parents to return to the nest_ , he imagines — to read at the end of the day.

He looks down at the third page again and, for the first time, sees the notation _pto_ in the bottom right-hand corner.

_P.S.: Dad, I’d be very grateful to you if you could avoid mentioning this letter to Sam. I’ll write her a letter later today, or tomorrow at the latest. I haven’t yet entirely decided what to tell her about all of this, but I want to spare her from any pointless worrying. She deserves better than me in any case._

The door knocker sounds.

* * *

He is right, it seems, about a letter to Sam. More than a day passes before she mentions Andrew, not until she is driving them up the approach to the disused school where the Americans have been billeted.

‘Have you heard from Andrew, sir?’

He takes a breath.

_Dad, I’d be very grateful to you if you could avoid mentioning this letter to Sam._

‘No,’ he says.

_FINIS_

__


End file.
